Throughout
our career, we continuously learn about our management
style, how we lead others through interpersonal
communication and how we cope with stress and other
workplace challenges. Becoming
more self-aware
gives us great leverage in consciously exhibiting the
type of behavior that gets
us where we want to
be.
Our
perceptions
represent the way we see how the world works and they
also strongly influence those we live and work with.
Catalyst, a New York nonprofit research group,
asked 296 executives of both genders to rate by
percentage the effectiveness of female and male
leaders on ten different leadership
behaviors.
Both genders said men are better at networking,
influencing upward and delegating. "Women as well as
men perceive women leaders as better at caretaker
behaviors and men as better at take-charge behaviors,"
says Ilene Lang, president of Catalyst. "These
are perceptions, not the reality."
Three decades after
droves of women
started
business careers, and at a time when fifty percent of
all
managers
and
professionals are female, women still comprise fewer
than two percent of Fortune 1,000 CEOs and just
eight percent of Fortune 500 top earners. The
glass ceiling remains unbroken.
Are
you ready to start doing things differently to achieve
the success you deserve?
If so, join Barb
McEwen, certified master executive coach, and John
Agno for a teleclass series on the subject of Same
Workplace, Different Realities. More information
at: www.ExecutiveTeleclasses.com
For information on the Women
Only Coaching Club, go to:
www.FemaleExecutiveClub.com
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our Podcast:
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A survey of women in
high tech by Deloitte, the accounting firm, and
pollster Roper Starch Worldwide reported that
three of every five women in the information
technology industry would choose another profession if
they could, because of a perceived glass ceiling.
Women, surveyed by Deloitte and Roper, say they're
perceived as less knowledgeable and qualified than
men. One woman surveyed says that women have a tough
time "being taken seriously" in high tech.
Every corporate
culture has ingrained biases where management attempts
to maintain the status quo. This cultural immunity to
change is especially difficult for
women being denied promotions
when the
leaders of the company don't realize they are doing
it. If men don't think women belong in corporate
leadership positions, they can create subtle male
resistance in work environments where women find it
difficult, if not impossible, to move up.
Since male
executives have shaped the culture at most companies
over time, women are at a disadvantage when it comes
to gender-based differences in communication styles. A
report, "Women and Men in U.S. Corporate Leadership:
Same Workplace, Different Realities?" by Catalyst
found that 81% of women said that "adopting a
style with which male managers are comfortable" is an
important or very important strategy to advance one's
career.
Communication
styles
rooted in childhood training or unconscious beliefs
can be tough to change. A first step is becoming aware
of how you talk at work. Here are some pitfalls that
women especially can encounter in the workplace:
--using too many
words to deliver serious messages
--downplaying your
contributions
--using vague
language
--phrasing
statements as questions
--using an upward
inflection at the end of statements, which indicates
doubt.
Working with a
mentor
or personal coach
can help you to be clear on the communication style at
your level within the company and to confidently
practice this style so you will be heard at
work.
People who solve any
serious challenge are the ones who change
the
way they think about
themselves.
They convince themselves that they can change, and
they do change. Believing comes first, then change,
not the other way around.
Preview
Leadership Online Streaming Training for only
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Remember
Chrissy Snow, the dumb blonde played by Suzanne Somers
on the TV show, Three's Company, that ended in
1981?
Suzanne says in the
March 2006 issue of Inc.Magazine that, "I learned
packaging is important. Chrissy was packaged as a
sexy, dumb blonde. I didn't look right standing in
front of these corporate men at the network saying, "I
would like you to pay me equal to what you're paying
the men." If you're playing the dumbest blonde on the
planet, and you're standing there talking like some
sort of feminist, it just doesn't work. The response
was, 'Who do you think you are?' In retrospect, even
though I was devastated at the time, it forced me to
reinvent myself."
If you are ready,
willing and able to reinvent yourself by allowing your
perceptions to evolve through a coaching makeover, we
should talk. My name is John
Agno
and, as a
certified executive and business coach, I coach many
women
executives
and business
owners
to perform as effective leaders in their
business
and personal
lives.
To talk about where
you are and where
you want to be,
call me at 734.426.2000 (US Eastern Time Zone)
or email info@coachthee.com
to schedule a
time for us to have a free 20-minute uninterrupted
confidential telephone consultation regarding your
leadership development.
Do You
Measure Up?
Most of us, in ways
that we are not entirely aware of, automatically
associate leadership ability with imposing physical
stature. We have a sense of what a leader is supposed
to look like, and that stereotype is so powerful that
when someone fits it, we simply become blind to other
considerations.
Malcolm Gladwell in
his new bestseller, "blink"
(Little,
Brown), took a sample and found that, on average, male
CEOs were just a shade under six feet tall. Given that
the average American male is five foot nine, that
means that CEOs as a group have about three inches on
the rest of their sex.
In the US
population, about 14.5 percent of all men are six feet
or taller. Among CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, that
number is 58 percent. Even more striking, in the
general American population, 3.9% of adult men are six
foot two or taller. Among Gladwell's CEO sample,
almost a third were six foot two or taller.
Of the tens of
millions of American men below five foot six, a grand
total of ten in Gladwell's sample have reached the
level of CEO, which says that being short is probably
as much of a handicap to corporate success as being a
woman or an African American.
For more on the
debate of whether leadership is learned or innate, go
to: www.LeadershipTips.info
For
self-help books click on: be
conscious of your default
behavior
,
love
, success
, A.D.D.
, self-coaching
, leadership
,
what
should I do with my
life
and the
meaning of life
Do these 10 terms describe you?
Professional, credible,
assertive, capable, intelligent, direct, articulate,
politically astute, self-confident and self-marketer?
If not, it's makeover
time with Lois Frankel, an executive coach for Fortune
500 companies. In Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner
Office, she's not talking about a new lipstick and
eyeliner, although a new hairstyle isn't out of the
question. This makeover means rethinking how you
behave at work so you aren't passed over for
promotions.
Are you the kind of
person who talks too fast, leaves voice mail with your
first name only, shares way too much personal
information or puts on lipstick in public?
Silly you -- at least
in terms of getting ahead.
Your transformation
begins with a self-assessment that prompts you to
decide how true each of 49 statements is: Examples: "I
look people directly in the eye on first meeting
them." "My voice is loud and clear." "I can tell you
in thirty seconds or less how I bring value to my
firm."
Once you identify your
weakest areas through her scoring system, Frankel
suggests that you begin by reading the two chapters
that coincide with your two lowest scores. Then you
can review the other mistakes as time permits.
For Frankel,
self-improvement is, gulp, empowerment: "I am fully
aware that there are those who say the term
empowerment is outdated and outdone. I strongly
disagree . . . without embarrassment or apology I say,
this book is about empowerment."
She suggests tackling
a few improvements at a time. If you focus on one
thing, other changes occur naturally, she writes. She
credits this advice to Wimbledon champ Julie Anthony,
who now coaches several women on the professional
tennis tour. Anthony explained that you never tell a
player to focus on changing her grip, her stance and
her forehand all at once. By changing only the grip,
the player will find her stance and forehand changing
along with it.
Click
here for this book and more on becoming an effective
leader.
Source: USA
Today, March 15, 2004
"How
to Keep Yourself From Becoming a Layoff Statistic"
by Hal Lancaster,
Career Corner columnist of The Wall Street
Journal's Career Journal
The mood is pretty
grim around the old water cooler these days. Revenues
and profits are down and cost-cutting executives are
roaming the compound looking for human sacrifices. How
do you avoid the blow from their terrible swift
swords? Or, as a career counselor would put it: How do
you make yourself indispensable in hard
times?
How can
women ascend to senior positions in Corporate
America?
By developing and
implementing a strategic career plan, stop managing
too many details in the job, delegate more and get
yourself an executive coach. Here is a list of actions
for the woman executive to take from "What Every
Successful Woman Knows: 12 Breakthrough Strategies to
Get the Power & Ignite Your Career" by Janice
Reals Ellig and William J. Morin
(McGraw-Hill):
1. Take stock of where
you are and set goals for the future.
2. Fit in and adapt
before you initiate change.
3. Make sure your job
has profit-and-loss responsibility.
4. Develop mutually
useful relationships with your bosses.
5. Create your own
power base with people inside and outside the
corporation.
6. Speak your mind but
be relevant.
7. Build your brand
and toot your own horn---a lot.
8. Spend time on
significant projects.
9. Devote 80% of your
time to working your job and 20% to managing your
career.
10. Have technical,
business and people skills.
11. Be wise about
office romances and follow established procedures to
address sexual harassment.
12. Act with
authority: Communicate a vision, take risks and make
things happen.
In their book,
Maximum Success: Changing the Twelve Behavior
Patterns That Keep You From Getting Ahead, James
Waldroop and Timothy Butler identify twelve behavior
patterns — what they call "Achilles' heels"
— that can harm, or seriously hinder, a person's
career development. In their roles as consultants and
executive coaches to many Fortune 500 companies, they
offer invaluable job-saving advice on how readers can
modify their behavior to get things back on
track.
Behaviors
That Can Hold You Back
Here are five behavior
patterns that can be highly destructive to your
career. Please note that the following stories of
real-life individuals illustrate a "pure case" of the
behavior in question. Although these stories are
actually quite interesting, please do not make the
mistake of comparing yourself to those worst case
examples.
Chances are, you
aren't in half as much trouble as some of these
people. But even the occasional display of some of
these behaviors — especially as you move upward
in an organization — can do substantial damage to
your ultimate career success. Although the book
identifies twelve behavior patterns, here are only
five of the behaviors, starting with...
1)
Never Feeling Good Enough
"In a world
overpopulated with enormous egos, 40-year old Paul
seemed to be an anomaly," begins the first of Waldroop
and Butler's twelve case studies. "He actually had an
ego that was too small for his considerable abilities
and new position as head of the Mexican arm of an
international bank based in Dallas, Texas.
"Although he had never
been a manager, Paul had considerable know-how as a
banker and Latin America was his specialty. Moreover,
Paul had succeeded at everything he had ever done and
had been a top student in both college and graduate
business school. But in his new position, Paul was
suddenly a misfit — or so he felt. He was
self-conscious and awkward, and unable to speak with
authority. Instead of strolling through the offices in
comfortable command, Paul scurried down the halls with
an intense, inner-directed gaze that signaled to
everyone that he was in trouble. His body language
broadcast concern, discomfort and even isolation. His
discomfort soon began to show, and his clients and
subordinates also began to get quite edgy
themselves."
Paul's actions and
feelings fall into a pattern that Waldroop and Butler
describe as a kind of career-related acrophobia.
Paul's insecurity was born of his innate belief that
he was incapable of surviving at the heights he had
somehow scaled. He felt in his heart of hearts that he
didn't deserve to be where he had been placed, which
is a feeling a surprising number of people have to a
greater or lesser extent.
How can someone like
Paul who habitually feels and acts this way acclimate
and learn to love the heights? As Paul was counseled,
it became clear that he would have to learn to carry
himself in a way that reflected his ability and the
capacity for command he had inside. He was coached to
adopt the look of someone who is full of confidence,
even if he didn't feel that way inside. They coached
him to walk slowly, to talk slowly and even to eat
slowly.
Those simple gestures
seemed superficial at first, but coupled with some
other interventions, they actually worked. Over a
period of months, Paul's clients and employees began
to see him as a relaxed, confident leader, and Paul
responded by developing even more
self-assurance.
2)
Seeing the World in Black and White
"Sometimes the world
behaves in wonderfully rational ways," say Waldroop
and Butler, "but most of the time, it doesn't. We see
this every time someone gets a job because of
'connections,' or children of alumni in many private
schools get preference over other
applicants."
Despite the fact that
most of us learn about these things at an early age,
some folks apparently never moderate their faith in
the perfect rationality of the world. Waldroop and
Butler refer to these people as meritocrats —
people who blindly insist that virtually everything in
life must be judged strictly rationally on its own
inherent merit, refusing to see even shades of gray.
Emotions, politics, sentimentality, loyalty and
favoritism play absolutely no part. Meritocrats, write
Waldroop and Butler, consistently talk about the way
things "should be," not the way things actually are.
It's almost as if the meritocrat lives in a remote
parallel universe, but unfortunately it is a world
that exists only in his or her mind.
Meritocrats almost
always undermine their own careers by continually
"fighting the good fight" at work until they
exasperate their peers, supporters and superiors. For
example, one client named "Dan," went to work in a
family business straight out of college — someone
else's family, not his. He knew from the beginning
what the situation was and that he would never get a
share of the business. Moreover, he knew that the
several members of the family his age and younger
would have a much greater say in how the business was
to be run.
Dan, who was a very
hard worker, had bought into this arrangement with
open eyes, but he couldn't help himself from pointing
out to anyone who would listen about how unfair the
whole situation was. One day, he confronted his boss
with his perspective on the situation. The owner's
response was that he understood how Dan felt, but he
was still going to hand the family business over to
his sons, and if he felt that strongly about it he
should leave. If only Dan, a consummate meritocrat had
understood himself and his needs better, he probably
never would have accepted that job in the first
place.
People who are extreme
meritocrats are relatively rare in business and are
rarely very successful in that forum, because business
dealings almost always involve a compromise with
perfection. The authors argue that people who exhibit
strong meritocratic tendencies are better suited to
careers such as science or engineering, where black
and white quests for perfection are generally better
tolerated.
3)
Doing Too Much, Pushing Too Hard
"As far back as she
could remember, Stephanie made extraordinary demands
on herself. It wasn't enough that she was an A student
from as far back as she could remember, she insisted
on extra-credit work as well. She was also class
president, a member of the debating team, a devoted
gymnast and head of the drama club.
"At first, Stephanie's
obsession with taking on more and more responsibility,
and working harder than anyone around her, was a
source of amusement to her friends. But later in
college, and when she entered the world of work, the
smiles began to fade." Stephanie had developed what
Waldroop and Butler refer to as a "hero" behavior
pattern, and by the time she'd reached her mid-20's,
virtually no one could stand to be around
her.
Waldroop and Butler
stress that setting goals and working hard to achieve
them is never a bad thing. But, in their view, heroes
tend to bite off more than they can chew, and are
never satisfied with what they've
accomplished.
Heroes, they say, may
find a decent fit as a management consultant or some
other type of independent contributor, but they will
never succeed in a traditional slow-growth company
where teamwork is highly valued. This is because
heroes never seem to understand that the people who
work around and under them sometimes need a rest, and
in doing so they often drive people away, which can be
deadly for an organization.
That said, of all the
Achilles' heels discussed in the book, the hero
probably has the greatest potential for enormous
career success. The world needs heroes but only those
who have learned to slow down once in awhile, and be
compassionate and understanding of others. Otherwise,
they may find themselves mortally wounded like the
original hero Achilles himself, undone by their very
acts of heroism.
4)
Avoiding Conflict at Any Cost
A peacekeeper is
someone who is determined to avoid conflict at any
cost. In doing so, peacekeepers believe that they are
both protecting themselves from harm, and preserving
the orderly functioning of their organizations. On
both counts, say Waldroop and Butler, peacekeepers are
terribly wrong. In fact, they argue that peacekeeping
is an insidious behavior that can ultimately undermine
relationships and destroy organizations.
Anger and its
resolution are essential components of the human
experience. The cost of suppressing one's emotions may
not show up early in a career. When you're first
starting out, you're expected to watch, listen and
learn. But, inevitably, getting to the top of an
organization requires a willingness to take risks and
battle rivals. And once on top, a leader sometimes has
to require subordinates to do things they don't
necessarily want to do.
When Waldroop and
Butler coach compulsive peacekeepers, they have two
goals: to desensitize them to conflict, and to build
their skills at handling conflict. With this approach,
they help their clients to become stronger until they
are able to take on the toughest situations at work
and in their personal lives. Being able to deal with
conflict effectively is both an essential survival
skill, and a surefire ticket to career
success.
5)
Bulldozing the Competition
"Most of us learn
early on to play nicely with the other children,"
write Waldroop and Butler, "but some of us don't."
Extreme examples of such people who never learn to get
along with others are called bulldozers. Like an
offensive lineman in football, the bulldozer's goal is
to flatten people, and to run roughshod over them as
necessary.
Although bulldozers
love to think of themselves as irresistible forces,
ultimately they run into a real immovable object,
something they cannot plow through, and because they
never learned the skill of moving around resistance,
they are defeated. Of the twelve behavior patterns
Waldroop and Butler describe in their book, eleven of
them are as likely to be women as men. But not the
bulldozer. Although a few women do fit this pattern
— women such as Margaret Thatcher and Leona
Helmsley — bulldozing is a condition that is
almost exclusively male.
According to Waldroop
and Butler, bulldozers view any and all situations as
zero-sum games and adversarial in nature. They focus
only on how to get the biggest piece of the pie —
if not all of it. Some bulldozers manifest their
behavior by monopolizing air time in meetings and by
instantly squashing any opposition. Others achieve
their goals through simple intimidation — using a
domineering physical presence or a steely glare to get
their way.
Fortunately, the world
has evolved in a number of ways over recent years to
render people who exhibit this behavior pattern
increasingly obsolete. Bulldozers might have been okay
people to have around in a manufacturing based economy
where assignments are generally clear and
straightforward. But bulldozers generally fall down in
face-to-face service relationships with customers
where they have to read what people are thinking and
adjust their tactics accordingly.
Like the other
Achilles' heels, bulldozing is a correctable flaw, but
it takes a lot of work. The motto of the recovering
bulldozer must become "do unto others as you would
have them do unto you" — the Golden Rule or the
Law
of Reciprocity.
Because the fatal flaw of the bulldozer is a lack of
empathy, taking the time to think about and understand
how other people feel is the only way out of this rut.
On the other hand, because of their energy and
tenacity, a reformed bulldozer can actually be a
valuable asset to any organization — but it's
rare that people who exhibit these traits are ever
able to stick around long enough to get a second
chance.
Putting
It All Together
In the cases of Paul
the acrophobic banker and Stephanie the hero, who were
briefly profiled above, their Achilles' heels were
nearly their undoing. But having potentially fatal
flaws, as they did, does not have to result in career
stagnation or termination. In fact, Waldroop and
Butler would argue that we all have Achilles' heels of
one sort or another. It's just that some of us have
learned to manage them successfully, while others of
us allow them to hold us down.
Executive coaches can
provide their clients with some of the tools that Paul
and Stephanie didn't have. Learning to recognize the
ways you — and all of us — engage in
behaviors that create our own "glass ceilings" will
enable us to break through them and achieve the
success we deserve.
Where
is your life today and where do you want to
be?
"Have
you ever watched, listened, and felt someone tuning a
guitar or other string instrument? That is what it is
like to have the good fortune of connecting with John
Agno. He is a living tuning fork and you're that
string instrument. Today, I have greater self
awareness, am more in step with my calling, and better
able to appreciate the journey, including the valleys,
than ever before. Thanks, John for helping me get
attuned with my
LifeSignature."
T.U.,
Chicago, IL,
USA
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